IT"S ALL A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE

March 10, 2002 ~ Grace
Christian Reformed Church, Cobourg

Have you ever stood on the
shore of a lake and tried to stop the waves? No matter how hard you try the
water just rushes past you and runs upon the shore any way. My children and I
keep on getting soaked on our vacations but have never yet stopped a wave. By
ourselves, with just our own resources, there is very little that we can do to
stop the waves.

Have you ever felt that the
world around you was rushing headlong to evil and there was nothing you could do
to even slow it down? It is a sad reality that we live in a world that has for
the most part chosen to completely ignore our God. Even sadder is the idea that
we are seemingly unable to do anything but hold on more tightly to our own faith
so that, as the world falls away to ruin, we are not carried with it. No matter
what we do in this world it seems to have no effect other than to make
Christianity ever more the target of scorn and condemnation.

What is even more discouraging is that there is no
excuse for this behaviour. The world, in its rejection of God, is flying in the
face of the facts. Ray Stedman, in his exposition on Genesis, writes:

[Even] though we cannot feel beyond God -- we cannot
think beyond God, we cannot move beyond God, and there is no way to eliminate
him from our lives " nevertheless [the attempt is constantly made] to live as
though he did not exist. He is the greatest Fact of all, yet we do not want to
mention his name, we do not want to talk about his work, we take no cognizance
of his mind, his thinking, and his wisdom. How this shows the ignorance, the
superficiality, the shallowness of human thought and life.

In his letter to the Roman church Paul wrote very
similarly, saying that:

Romans 1:18-21 " 18
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and
wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 " since what
may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
20 For since the creation of the world God"s invisible qualities" his eternal
power and divine nature" have been clearly seen, being understood from what has
been made, so that men are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they
neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became
futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

It has been said time and time
again that man is born longing for God, yet by most of mankind God is denied. It
is not that God is unknown but that He is avoided. It"s like when we are walking
down the street and pretend to be looking at something else when we see someone
coming our way that we would rather not see. We cannot deny that person"s
reality so we ignore it instead. Those do not put their faith in God have no
other reason for doing so than that they wish to live as though He did not; they
have seen Him coming their way and have determined to look at something else so
as not to see Him.

In such an environment of
scorn for the truth and utter denial of the reality of God we may well wonder
what effect our testimony could have. Our own human strength is too small for
the task and we, even as children of the Creator of all that is, often limit our
perception of our abilities by our opinion of our own strength. To use the
example of trying to stop the waves again, we typically either want to stop the
entire wave or to stop no part of it. If we cannot do it all we are often
tempted to not even do a part.

I am here today, however, to
say that there is something that we can do. We are, each in our own way, able to
shine as beacons into the current darkness. Why? Not because we are so powerful,
or eloquent, or famous, or rich. We are able to shine because we are children of
the Father of lights and He has given each of us gifts and abilities suitable to
the work He has prepared for us. Each in our own distinct way is able through
the power of God to serve Him and call the attention of the world around us back
to Him. As Paul has written in his letter to the Ephesian church:

Ephesians 2:10 "For
we are God"s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God
prepared in advance for us to do.

I want to briefly share with
you today a story of a man who lived in an environment of rejection of God that
was very similar to ours. This story takes place 120 years after the death of
King David, at a time when the kingdom of Israel had been divided and the
glorious kingdom that David and Solomon had built upon the worship of God was
but a distant memory. His name is Elijah and he lived at a period in Israel"s
history when the kings of the northern half of this troubled kingdom had all but
obliterated the diligent worship of God in favour of the gods of the pagan
nations that surrounded them.

A tremendous insight into Elijah"s character is given
in the gospel of Luke. There, in Gabriel"s announcement to Zechariah of the
birth of his son, John the Baptist, John"s mission is compared to Elijah"s:

Luke 1:17 "And he will go on before
the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers
to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous"to make
ready a people prepared for the Lord.

This is the kind of man that
we will be looking at. A man who walked "before the Lord," or, in the way that
the Lord would go. A man who sought to turn the hearts of a lost people back
toward their God. Elijah"s purpose was to reintroduce people to the God that
they had abandoned and to remove the obstacles that stood in the way of their
faith. One of the more significant acts of his career occurred in a contest
between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel:

1 Kings 18:21-24 " 21 "
Elijah went before the people and said, "How long will you waver between two
opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him." But
the people said nothing. 22 Then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the
LORD"s prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets. 23 Get two
bulls for us. Let them choose one for themselves, and let them cut it into
pieces and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other
bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. 24 Then you call on the name
of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD. The god who answers by
fire" he is God." Then all the people said, "What you say is good."

Picture in your mind what this
contest may have looked like. We have at the top of Mount Carmel two altars.
Beside one is standing Elijah, the prophet of the Holy God. Beside the other are
crowded 450 prophets of Baal and an additional 400 prophets of other false gods.
Surrounding these two altars were many of the people of Israel, among them King
Ahab. King Ahab, and his wife Jezebel, were among Elijah"s chief adversaries in
the battle for the religious affections of the people of Israel. Due in part to
the strength and political wisdom of Ahab, Israel had again become a force to
reckon with in the region but its ignorance and carelessness toward God had
reached a low from which it would never recover and for which it would
ultimately be destroyed. The Bible speaks of Ahab in the following way:

1 Kings 16:29-33 "29 "
In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab son of Omri became king of
Israel, and he reigned in Samaria over Israel twenty-two years. 30 Ahab son of
Omri did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those before him. 31 He
not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, but
he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to
serve Baal and worship him. 32 He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal
that he built in Samaria. 33 Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to
provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than did all the kings of Israel
before him.

So we see Elijah on Mount
Carmel, alone, surrounded by a nation which had completely abandoned its God,
almost 1,000 prophets of the pagan gods, and King Ahab, a murderer and destroyer
of those who worshipped God. We might well imagine that Elijah would have been
somewhat subdued in the face of so great a number of our opponents, that he
would have given up just as we would in trying to stop the waves. But we read
that Elijah, as the day wore on, seemed to gain confidence. He ridiculed and
jeered at the false prophets. He made fun of them and of their god, belittling
this faith in man-made things that had dared to raise itself against the one
true God of all the world. He did not act as though he thought that the odds
were, by human standards, against him but he acted as though the odds were in
his favour.

1 Kings 18:25-29 " 25
Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one of the bulls and prepare it
first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but do not
light the fire." 26 So they took the bull given them and prepared it. Then they
called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. "O Baal, answer us!" they
shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the
altar they had made. 27 At noon Elijah began to taunt them. "Shout louder!" he
said. "Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling.
Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened." 28 So they shouted louder and
slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their
blood flowed. 29 Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying
until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one
answered, no one paid attention.

The only result of the first
half of this contest was a resounding silence. The writer of this history
summarizes the futility of this effort very effectively when he said that "there
was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention." That was simply
because there was no one to pay attention. 850 prophets of the pagan gods had
acted crazy all day long, cutting themselves, chanting and yelling, and there
was nothing that they could point to afterwards and say "Look! Look at what our
gods have done," for the gods to whom they had devoted their lives did not, in
fact, exist. These prophets would have been, for the most part, Israelites. They
were men who had rejected God for a lie which now, at the moment of their need,
had failed them completely.

Mark the dramatic difference
in the way in which Elijah performs in the second half of this contest. His
approach is not one of frantic dancing, yelling, or blood-letting but one of
quiet reverence founded on the knowledge that his God would answer the fervent
prayer of the righteous man.

1 Kings 18:30-39 " 30
Then Elijah said to all the people, "Come here to me." They came to him, and he
repaired the altar of the LORD, which was in ruins. 31 Elijah took twelve
stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the
LORD had come, saying, "Your name shall be Israel." 32 With the stones he built
an altar in the name of the LORD, and he dug a trench around it large enough to
hold two seahs of seed. 33 He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and
laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, "Fill four large jars with water and
pour it on the offering and on the wood." 34 "Do it again," he said, and they
did it again. "Do it a third time," he ordered, and they did it the third time.
35 The water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench. 36 At the
time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: "O LORD, God
of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel
and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. 37
Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are
God, and that you are turning their hearts back again." 38 Then the fire of the
LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and
also licked up the water in the trench. 39 When all the people saw this, they
fell prostrate and cried, "The LORD" he is God! The LORD" he is God!"

The response to Elijah"s faith
is both sudden and dramatic. Fire fell from heaven and burned up not only the
sacrifice but also the entire altar upon which it was placed. The response of
the people is just as sudden, a unified cry that the God that they had abandoned
was and is truly God: "The LORD"he is God! The LORD"he is God!" Quite
often in the Bible those of whom we read have names in keeping with their
purpose. Elijah"s name literally means: The Lord, He is God. If nothing else
Elijah had fulfilled his purpose, he had called the attention of the people back
toward their God.

In 1 Kings 19 we see what
happened to Elijah immediately following the great success of this contest. To
summarize: Elijah was threatened with death by Queen Jezebel as a result of his
killing of all of the false prophets whose god had failed them. We see Elijah
now as a man without hope who has all but given up on his mission. Yet at the
end of chapter 19 he was again filled with courage and able to stand boldly
before the nation to continue to call them to faith in God. The purpose of
chapter 19 is, in part, to remind us that it was God that gave Elijah his power
to stand against the prophets of Baal and against all the opposition he would
face during his career. On his own he was as weak as you or I would be on our
own. But with God he could do amazing things.

Elijah walked in his
environment like a tempest. Storms surround him. Major events occur when he is
present. Conflicts are brought to the foreground when he speaks. Armies are
defeated, kingdoms overthrown. He occupied the battlefront where the holy power
of God directly confronted Satan"s hate. He was the one who stood boldly before
the nation on behalf of God and called it to repentance. One could not meet
Elijah and continue to forget about God for God had sent him specifically to
turn the hearts of the people back toward Him. Elijah was a man who could stand
in the face of all the evil permitted by those that turned their backs on God
and know beyond a doubt that with God on his side he had both the majority and
the victory and that it did not matter what would happen so long as he did what
he was called to do.

There are many other stories
in the Bible that tell of the steadfast faith of the minority in the face of
unrelenting evil but I do not want to call your attention any more to the
stories of other people. The story I want you to concern yourselves with today
is our story. What are we able to do for God? What light are we able to shine in
our darkening world? What will people say of our faith and walk with God in the
days that follow our deaths? We may have fear of the consequences, or of the
size of the work before us, but that should not stop us. Jesus faced death to do
His Father"s will. Elijah, in the days that followed the contest, was almost
immobilized by fear of death and the impossibility of the work to which he had
been called. However, he carried on in the power of God and that is the lesson
we need to learn from this message. On our own there is nothing that we are able
to do. If we were to try we would be like the pagan prophets on Mount Carmel
calling out to nothing to get something done. This is the truly impossible
thing, to get nothing to do something. On our own we are powerless but with God
we are powerful. Elijah is referred to in the book of James where we read:

James 5:16-19 "16
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you
may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. 17
Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and
it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. 18 Again he prayed, and
the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. 19 My brothers, if one
of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, 20
remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him
from death and cover over a multitude of sins.

Elijah was a man just like us.
His power came from his faith in an all powerful God. We may never be called to
stand before thousands of people to turn them to faith in God but each of us,
every day, meets our neighbour, talks to a sales clerk, pays a gas station
attendant, and on and on and on. We meet people who need to have their hearts
turned back to God every day, in almost everything that we do. Christians are a
minority in this country (the latest statistics place the number of Christians
at less than one in twenty) so almost everyone we meet will not know God. We
need to remember that we do not need to feel intimidated by those who do not
believe but be motivated by God to do what we are called to do to bring them
back into the proper way of life. May God bless each of you as you seek His will
and call upon His power.